This invention relates to loyalty or reward points programs, and in particular to such programs that allow merchants to provide reward points to users wherein the merchants utilize the pre-existing infrastructure of a network such as a credit card network for awarding reward points, maintaining account information of users, aggregating reward points from various merchant-based reward accounts, and redeeming such reward points for products and services selected by the users.
In the prior art, in order to attract and retain business customers, airlines, hotels, car rental companies, chain retailers, telecom providers, etc. have historically introduced frequent use programs that offer awards of loyalty or reward points (e.g. frequent flyer miles) or other such incentives schemes based on the distance traveled or purchases made by that customer. Competition has forced airlines to modify the manner in which mileage was acquired to include travel related purchases by consumers. For example, the dollar-based cost of a ticket purchased may be awarded as mileage to a client account. Within the past several years, banks that issue credit cards or other retailers and e-tailers have co-branded credit cards in the name of the airlines and the credit card company where each dollar spent using the card is recorded as a mile of travel or point in the award program. These cards may additionally award bonus miles in coordination with user purchases of preferred products or flights during preferred times.
With regard to FIG. 1, a model of the frequent flyer systems of the prior art is presented. Two different airlines servers are shown surrounded by their related marketing partners. In order to lure more business travelers, the airlines have established marketing agreements with travel related companies to provide the business traveler with a more robust way to generate rewards in the form of frequent flyer miles. These marketing arrangements or associations have typically involved credit card companies, phone companies, hotel chains and car rental companies. Any purchases made through these co-branded partners were then awarded to the user periodically. Bonus miles or points may additionally be accumulated based on the user's actions in response to offers made by the airline or in coordination with the partner company. For example, phone companies purchase reward points or miles and then offer them to their customers based on the customer's agreement to switch to their phone service. These points are obtained by the partner companies by purchasing them from the issuing entity for redistribution as an incentive to utilize their particular goods and/or services. FIG. 2 shows some sample co-branded cards that are representative of marketing agreements between TWA, Sprint, and Mastercard. In order to receive these benefits, the user must sign up with each of the partner companies separately and provide the frequent flyer account number that is to receive the credited reward points or miles. A user either making phone calls or purchases in accordance with the agreements made with each of these partners will first accumulate a value on the partner's system which in turn is periodically updated on the airline's reward server to reflect the value earned during that period. FIG. 3 is representative of a typical user account that shows various earnings in the system transferred in from any of the co-branded partners. The records of the table in FIG. 3 identify the source of the rewards, the dates they were recorded and the number of miles associated with that transaction. The user can view the accumulated miles by accessing the airline's reward server or by tracking the individual value reported to the user through the various bills the user receives from each of the co-branded partners. In any event, the user is faced with an extremely difficult if not practically impossible task of manually coordinating all of his reward accounts to determine how many points may reside in each account, how to redeem points in each account, etc.
Large scale merchants such as chain hotels, chain rental cars, and various airlines are able to implement their own loyalty or reward points schemes since they have the infrastructure in place to maintain user loyalty point accounts. Thus, these large entitles are able to build brand loyalty via their own loyalty reward schemes. They are able to operate independently by awarding their own reward points and redeeming the reward points by offering their own products and services. A typical example is when a user earns 35,000 American Airlines points and trades them in for a free flight or upgrade, or when a user earns Hilton Honors points by staying at a Hilton hotel, and redeems them for free lodging at a Hilton hotel.
Mid-size and smaller merchants are often unable to implement their own loyalty reward programs due to the high cost of the infrastructure required, including server computers that maintain user reward accounts and administration costs. For example, a small independent restaurant or pizzeria may want to award reward points and allow users to redeem accumulated reward points for free or discounted meals, but is unable to do so due to the aforementioned high costs involved. As mentioned above, some companies have resorted to purchasing reward points or miles from larger companies and then distributing them to their customers, but this does not help build brand loyalty for that company (e.g. MCI gives a customer 5,000 American Airlines points to change to their service, but the customer is not getting MCI-branded points).
It is therefore desired to have a loyalty or reward point program that allows any merchant, regardless of its size, to award their own branded loyalty points and allow users to redeem them for their own products or services in order to build brand loyalty for that merchant. It is also desired to allow users to selectively redeem their reward points at other merchants that are part of the network.
Although the building of brand loyalty by merchants of any size and stature is critical, it is also recognized that users may end up with many different reward point accounts (one for each merchant at which purchases are made), each having relatively small numbers of points. It may take awhile for a user to build a meaningful sum of points with any one merchant, although there are great advantages to both the consumer as well as the merchant in doing so. It is therefore desired to provide a reward point system that allows users to aggregate reward points earned from these various merchants into a reward exchange account, wherein the aggregated reward points may be advantageously used to purchase goods or services from any selected merchant in the system.